Your Lease May be Illegal!
“What, after the long list of other things that I need to worry about as a residential landlord in Massachusetts, my lease may be illegal?”
If you are a residential landlord in Massachusetts, you are well aware of the many things you need to be aware of to operate your property successfully. But you may not be aware that the very lease that you distribute to your Massachusetts tenants has clauses that are illegal. This article discusses these five illegal terms that must not be included in any lease that you provide to your residential tenants.
Five Illegal Terms (Phrases) in a Massachusetts Lease
Tenant Pays for Wear and Tear
Landlords get a bad enough rap in our culture. If you are a Massachusetts landlord, do not make the mistake of including a provision in your lease which requires your tenant to pay for ordinary wear and tear. Paying for wear and tear in this context means payment of any kind. For example, it likely violates the law to demand an outright payment for a rug that shows foot traffic wear after a three year period. Similarly, the same law would likely be violated by a landlord choosing to deduct this same rug wear and tear from the security deposit.
Tenant Pays for Building Repairs
While you may be able to make a legitimate argument that damage done purposefully to the exterior of your property, for example, is the responsibility of the tenant that damaged the exterior, it would violate the law to require the tenant (in the lease) to pay for such damage to the building’s exterior ad hoc.
Tenant Cannot Sue Landlord for Sanitary Code Violations
This particular no-no in a residential lease in Massachusetts is probably self explanatory because most Landlords will intuitively realize that you can’t prevent a tenant from exercising his or her statutory rights. Still, it needs to be said. Leave out any provisions in a Massachusetts residential lease that might cause a tenant to think or believe that they cannot sue the landlord for a violation of the Massachusetts Sanitary Code.
Tenant Cannot Join a Tenants’ Union
While it may be tempting to dissuade a tenant from getting the idea to unionize with other tenants as a means of instituting rent control or for some other purpose, you cannot do so in a residential lease.
Late Fee Due If Rent Late One Day
Another temptation is for a Massachusetts Landlord to charge a tenant a fee if the rent is even one day overdue. While this may seem like a logical approach to keep your tenants on time with their rental payments, such a lease provision in a residential lease is illegal. Instead, the law in Massachusetts requires Landlord’s to give their tenants at least 30 days to make a payment. If the payment is not made by 30 days, then the late fee (as described in the lease) may be applied to the total rent due that month.
What Happens If I Don’t Follow the Rules?
Well the answer may depend upon the specific violation and could result in the imposition of a fine, sanction, some other equitable remedy, or a damage award to the tenant. Since Massachusetts landlord-tenant law specifically prohibits the inclusion of the aforementioned lease terms, the safest and wisest bet is to avoid using them at any and all costs. You do not want to be facing a judge in housing court attempting to explain away an illegal provision in the lease. At a minimum, the judge will think you are ignorant. Worse, the judge will think that you are trying to be tricky, and may impose harsh penalties as a result.
DISCLAIMER: The information provided in the pages and posts of this website are for general informational purposes only. The information presented on this site is not legal advice, and no attorney-client relationship is formed by the use of this site.